by Jim Benton
Carol about Mrs. Curie. Aunt Carol said she was fine,
and that she had been suffering with a headache and
needed to talk to Uncle Dan. She had left school a
little early yesterday and took today off.
105
I had to turn in that headline and news article
today to Mrs. Avon.
I never really did answer my own question. All
I could do was kind of build on it a little. Maybe I
am the dumb one. Anyway, here’s what I came
up with:
MEAT LOAF. NOBODY LIKES IT.
WHY IS IT SERVED?
When you ask this question around the
school, you’ll get answers here and
there, but none of them seem correct.
And the people who probably do know
why absolutely refuse to give you any
answer at all. Something doesn’t smell
right here, and it’s not just the cafeteria
every Thursday.
106
Mrs. Avon read my article out loud to the
class. They nodded in agreement, and then they
asked me why I thought I couldn’t get an answer.
Mrs. Avon smiled at me with even more gum than
usual. I’d say, like, 35 % more.
“Excellent work, Jamie,” she said.
“But I didn’t even answer the question,” I said.
She motioned around the room at the
other kids.
“No, but look at your readership. They want
to know more. They might even demand to know
more. Sometimes all you have to do is flip on the
lights, Jamie. You don’t have the answer, but I think
you have a lot more people interested if you ever do
find it.”
107
Thursday 26
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella and I got called down to the office
before lunch. I started to freak out just a little on
the way.
“We’re busted,” I whispered. “We’re so
busted. The extracurriculars. The Permanent
Records. The coffee.”
Isabella looked at me calmly. Her mouth was
as straight and thin as a paper cut.
“Don’t lose it on me, Jamie,” she said.
“Be calm.”
“You’re going to have to live at home with
your brothers forever,” I said, encouraging her to
join me in the freak- out.
She stopped and grabbed me by the collar.
“I will kung fu my way out of that office, take
you as a hostage, and jump a train to Mexico before
that happens, Jamie.”
Oh, Isabella. If had a nickel for every time you
made that threat.
108
When we got to the office, we were pretty
surprised to find that Bruntford, Mrs. Curie, and
Angeline were all sitting there with Uncle Dan. He
looked more principally than I have ever seen him,
and he had our Permanent Records on his desk.
Oh boy.
“So,” he began. “It looks like you two have
been pretty busy.”
“You mean like with cleaning our rooms and
doing homework and being good and helping the
poor and doing our homework?” I stammered
nervously. Isabella put her hand on my knee and
squeezed it hard enough to leave a bruise.
“What do you mean, ‘You’ve been
busy’?” she asked calmly.
109
“Jamie, you’ve signed up for eight
extracurriculars in three weeks? Plus, you’re doing
soccer?” Uncle Dan said.
Isabella nodded. “That’s right,” she said.
“Jamie,” he said, holding up a copy of the
article I wrote for Mrs. Avon’s class, “tell me about
the meat loaf.”
Isabella answered before I could say anything.
“The meat loaf they serve here is awful. We
all hate it.”
Angeline nodded.
“Isabella, if you don’t mind, I’d like to hear it
from Jamie.”
I swallowed hard.
“It’s just like it says there. Nobody likes it,
but the school serves it to us every Thursday and
they always have. Maybe I’m dumb, but that makes
no sense to me,” I said.
110
“At your suggestion, I finally tried that meat
loaf,” Uncle Dan said. “You’re not dumb, Jamie, not
by a long shot. That stuff is horrible. And I looked
into it. Mrs. Bruntford, could you please explain?”
And then it all came out.
Actually, there wasn’t a lot to come out.
Here’s the BIG SECRET: It’s cheap. That’s
pretty much it. The meat loaf they use is cheap.
If that had been the end of it, I would have
understood. Mom has to buy cheap stuff all the
time. It’s like Miss Anderson said at the Cuisine
Club: You have to keep your meals on a budget and
not overspend on one item . . .
. . . or you won’t have any money for
anything else.
I wonder if this was what Mom was teaching
me at the grocery store while I wasn’t learning.
111
“Now, Jamie. Could you please tell us about
the coffee?” Uncle Dan asked suddenly, and I
started to twitch.
Isabella jumped to her feet.
“You ever meet my brothers?” she hissed.
“It’s not going to go down this way. Which way is
Mexico?”
Angeline smiled at me, and for some reason I
calmed down. Angeline knew something.
I put my hand on Isabella’s arm and slowly
guided her back to her chair. She was about ten
seconds from foaming up.
“Which coffee?” I asked.
“The coffee that the teachers serve in the
Teachers’ Lounge,” Uncle Dan said.
“Well, it’s really good coffee,” I said simply.
112
“It’s really, really good coffee. Really good
coffee. The kind that costs a lot, I bet,” Uncle Dan
agreed.
Then Bruntford explained how they could
afford it.
They’ve been saving money on the meat loaf
and using it to buy great coffee for the Teachers’
Lounge.
Bruntford has been doing it for a few years
now because she thought the teachers deserved it,
and Mrs. Curie was the one helping her keep the
Teachers’ Lounge supplied. Mrs. Curie looked like
she wanted to cry while she explained.
“Jamie, I thought it was commensalism. You
know, the way the cows stir up bugs for the birds. I
didn’t think it harmed anything. But I realize now
that I hadn’t thought about the bugs. You made me
see that.”
“So, let’s toss these old hags in jail, am I
right?” Isabella said to Uncle Dan, quickly
regaining her composure and wiping a small amount
of foam from her lips.
113
“Hang on a second. There is the matter of
signing up for all these clubs,” Uncle Dan said.
“They were trying to figure out what was
going on with the coffee,” Angeline jumped in.
“As you all know, I’m the one that gets all of the
&
nbsp; extracurricular sign- up information from the clubs,
and I give it all to our assistant principal here.”
OH MY GOSH. THAT’S HOW
ANGELINE KNEW WHAT WE WERE SIGNING
UP FOR.
“And I think it’s pretty obvious that Jamie
and Isabella have been trying to figure this out for
a while.”
Assistant Principal Uncle Dan looked at her
with some disbelief.
“Jamie took up chess to form a strategy. They
needed to learn about cameras in case she needed
photo evidence, so they joined the Camera Club.
The Agricultural Club taught them about beef and
coffee, and she joined that Organization Club
because there was a lot to keep straight.”
“Uh- huh. What about the Running Club? The
Videogamer Club?” Uncle Dan asked, flipping
through our folders. He looked unconvinced.
Isabella decided to help explain.
“The Running Club was so we’d have an
excuse for being late while we acquired the coffee
sample,” Isabella said. “And the Videogamer Club
was so we’d have some nerds to use as human
shields if this got ugly.”
“No. Not that last part,” I said. “We weren’t
going to use human shields.”
Uncle Dan stared at us for a minute. “The
Dance Club? The Cuisine Club?”
“The Cuisine Club! Yeah, that’s the best
part,” Angeline said. “Jamie and Isabella were
hoping we could all have lunch together today.”
115
It wasn’t something you see every day:
Bruntford, Uncle Dan, Mrs. Curie, and Miss Anderson
sat down to a meat loaf lunch with Angeline,
Isabella, Hudson, and me.
We talked about the price of things, and Miss
Anderson asked a lot of questions about the food
service that provides the meat loaf. She went
through some of the ordering information that
Bruntford had brought along and demonstrated
how, with a little imagination and artistry, we could
come up with alternatives that the kids would like
better, and wouldn’t cost any more than meat loaf.
That’s right, Dumb Diary. And you know who
was doing all of the math on this? ME.
“There’s still enough left over for the
teachers to have their fancy coffee,” I said. “And I
think we should let them have it. It’s not a big deal,
and they sure seem to like it. They weren’t really
doing anything wrong, they just hadn’t thought it
through.”
“As the secretary of the Student Awareness
Committee, I second that motion,” Angeline said,
reminding me of how much I hate it when people
talk like that.
“What’s the Student Awareness Committee?”
Uncle Dan asked.
116
“It’s the extracurricular that Jamie and I
started,” Isabella said. “It’s the organization that
cracked this whole crime ring.”
“Does it have a teacher sponsor?” he asked.
“It sure does,” Mrs. Curie said. I could hardly
believe that she volunteered to do it, after our little
difficulties. It gives me hope that maybe one day an
anemone will gallantly turn off his stingers, and let
some poor hungry creature just eat that clown fish
for once.
“Jamie is the president,” Angeline added.
“You have all the paperwork on your desk.”
And then, just like that, Mrs. Curie and I were
okay. Plus, now Isabella and I have this awesome
thing in our Permanent Records, and nobody thinks
of me as the dumb one anymore.
And for the first time ever, I actually finished
the school meat loaf without complaining. It’s the
last time they’ll ever serve it, and I can honestly
say, it’s never tasted better.
Friday 27
Dear Dumb Diary,
We had our field trip to the science museum
today. For some reason, looking out the window of
the bus and watching the road go by helped me
think.
I think I’m actually going to go to the Cuisine
Club, and maybe even the Running Club. (It’s pretty
clear that I need to exercise.) Isabella said she’s
going to go to the Videogamer Club. She wants to
secretly get good at games so she can beat her
older brothers while pretending it was the first time
she ever played. And she’s making Angeline go, too,
so she won’t be the only girl.
As the bus bumped along, I thought about my
future — my perfect future. And I thought about
everybody else’s future.
Angeline can be whatever she wants, of
course, but not because she’s so horribly pretty.
Angeline is smart and thoughtful and really comes
through for you even though you don’t want to be in
debt to her. I forgave her for lying about Hudson
and the coffee. She was just mad that I had
excluded her. She’ll probably be president one day,
and I’ll vote for her. Of course, I’ll tell her I voted for
the other guy. Angeline, out of pity, probably
actually will vote for her opponent.
Yolanda will do something dainty, like be a
brain surgeon or knit sweaters for mosquitoes that
have to live in colder climates.
Hudson won’t have to work. I’ll make enough
so that he can stay home and watch our perfect
kids, Michelangelo, Geronimo, and Caramel. I’m not
sure about all those names, of course. I might
not go with Michelangelo.
119
I looked over at Isabella, my best friend, and
even though she’d said it was obvious, I STILL had
no idea what she was going to be one day.
She had enough of the special teacher coffee
left over to make herself just one single cup, and
she had it with her in a thermos. As she was opening
it, she spilled it on Hudson.
The smell, along with the bus ride, made him
throw up. But like I said before, it’s a school bus so
nobody cared. Free pass.
I watched Isabella fearlessly clean up the
barf with a couple of sheets of notebook paper.
There was something about how she was laughing
the whole time that made it all clear to me.
Isabella is clever and quick and dangerous
when she needs to be. She will mess you up in one
second, but she’s always been there for me, even
when it was just to yell at me. She’s very difficult
to fool, and I just can’t help but like her, even when
I don’t.
120
“Isabella,” I whispered. “I know what you’re
going to be one day.”
Isabella smiled and flipped the gross,
wadded- up notebook paper at me and I ducked.
“Of course you do, Jamie. You’re all smart
like that.”
“You’re going to be a teacher,” I said
confidently.
“A perfect one,” she added.
“As close as it gets, anyway,” I said, you
know, all smart like that.
Thanks for listening, Dumb Diary,
What’s Your Future?
Okay, you know your life is going to be totally
perfect. But you can find out more about what the
future has in store by answering these questions!
1.) If you forgot to study for a test, what would you do?
a. Point out to the teacher that tests aren’t
really a true measure of how much we know.
b. Fake a horrible disease and go to the nurse’s
office.
c. Release bag of bats in classroom (requires
some preparation).
2.) Of these choices, which is your favorite school
subject?
a. Art
b. Math
c. Lunch
3.) On a Sunday afternoon, what are you usually doing?
a. Homework that I put off until the very last
minute.
b. Anything I want! I finished my homework on
Friday night.
c. Waiting for my dad to fall asleep on the couch
so I can change the TV channel from football
to a glorious dance movie.
4.) What animal are you most like?
a. A cute and big- eyed koala
b. A noble horse
c. A friendly dolphin that is also part koala on
his mom’s side
5.) How many extracurricular activities are you
involved in?
a. 1–2
b. 5+
c. 3–4
6.) If your stinky beagle or other doglike pet was
foaming at the mouth, what would you do?
a. My stinky beagle is always foaming at the
mouth. Foam is how he communicates. How is
this different than any other time?
b. Call the vet right away. (It’s not rabies. Rabies
would choose a cuter dog.)
c. Check to make sure he didn’t eat a whole tube
of toothpaste (which is likely).
7.) Of these choices, what’s your favorite color?
a. Sparkle colored
b. A nice, calming blue
c. Purple
HEY! WHATEVER YOU DO, DOn’T
LOOK FOR JAmiE KELLY’S NEXT
TOP SECRET DiARY. . . .
Turn the page for a super -secret sneak peek. . . .
Dear Dumb diary Year Two #4: